::Shock!:: People of the week: Lena and Yulia.
“The hottest popstars today!” – Magazine THE FACE
Something expected happened last week, but a lack of significance did not become of this: for the first time in history, on the top spot of the British chart was a pop song belonging to a Russian group.
Prior to Tatu, nobody has succeeded in doing this.
It’s understandable: they seem to have plenty of their own pop in Albion. But somehow eventually, two Russian girls have grabbed the attention of the experienced British listener.
How?
Everyone now is asking this same question – from TV shows for the young to the solid conservative newspaper “Daily Telegraph.” And, it seems, everyone has the same opinion: music, lyrics, quality of performance, and even the arrangement has nothing to do with it.
It’s all about the image.
Underage lesbians.
Britney’s fans say, that there’s something very familiar about those skirts.
“Yulia and Lena – two brave singers from Moscow – have already left a mark across all of Europe and the US with their infectious, 80’s-sounding pop, and now, it looks as though the time has come for the UK,” writes HMV, one of the biggest and most loved music stores in Britain, on their homepage.
“The hottest popstars today,” is how Tatu is described by the country’s popular youth magazine, FACE.
“Pop-scandals occur at the beginning of each year, and this time the author has become the Russian group Tatu, full of ambiguity, that even Eminem with his noodles-for-brains appears to be high quality entertainment,” writes a columnist for the “Daily Telegraph”, Nick Kohuen. – They got their ambiguous status thanks to their first [on the British market] single All The Things She Said, in which a history of two under-age girls is told, who are attracted to each other with a frightening strength.”
Certainly, the West hasn’t seen a small number of scandalous artists on stage. The Sex Pistols with their naive – anarchical exorcisms, Ozzy with his biting off heads of pigeons and bats, Pink Floyd with their parallel between Britain and
Nazi totalitarianism, Tupac Shakur with his gangsterism, Michael Jackson with his cosmetic work, Snoop Dog with his narcotics, and Eminem with his electric chainsaws and hockey masks – and year after year there’s more and more frank exposure.
Homosexuality on stage is not a new thing, though only – soft, but teasing lesbian erotica shown in a hit video, and with underage stars – Madonna never even thought of this.
Britney-pop in Russian.
‘Gorky Park’ in ’80 was clearer.
It’s interesting, that Tatu’s achievements in Britain come at the time when the country is holding an active campaign against paedophilia (some even say, that the founding producer of the group Ivan Shapovalov intentionally didn’t strive to enter the market any earlier: he waited until the girls became of legal age.)
Most columnists here don’t even strive to find any explanation as to their achievements. But honestly, what is the main difference that separates Lena and Yulia from Alsou, – disregarding the main financial sources – who was hardly even acknowledged in London?
You can’t write off this achievement due to the general interest of the West in Russia, the way it was many years ago with ‘Gorky Park.’ Then, back in the 1980’s, the tastiest words in Europe and America were ‘perestroika’, ‘Gorbatchov’ and ‘openness’. So, in order to make it through to the Billboard top 50, ‘Gorky Park’ wasn’t really changed in any way.
Now everything’s different.
“There’s a huge fan base for the Backstreet Boys, a huge fan base for Britney, and these formulae are repeated over and over again. But Tatu is original, very fresh and totally new!” David Jenk, Universal Music.
Here’s the latest info on Europe: in Belgium Tatu are at fourth place, in France second, in Germany – fifth… Until recently All The Things She Said was number one in Switzerland, Spain, Italy, where the single’s already gone gold. It was in the top five in the US, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, is regularly shown on MTV, and not only in Russia.
"Right from the beginning, Tatu’s been different to everything else [in their homeland]," is how David Jenk, the director of the Russian subsidiary of Universal Music, explains the girls’ popularity. "And this is wonderful, because there’s a huge fan base for the Backstreet Boys, a huge fan base for Britney, and these formulae are repeated over and over again. But Tatu is original, very fresh and totally new."
It’s true that there are many that don’t agree with this. More often than not, in London, the Russians are compared to Britney – and it probably has a lot to do with the fact that in their Ya Soshla S Uma they are dressed in school uniforms – exactly like the American pop-princess in the clip Hit Me Baby One More Time.
The scent of freedom and scandal!
Richard and Judy: Britain is not the place for this music!
Not everyone has taken it to such a high degree as the hosts of a popular day-time show Britain Richard Medley and wife Judy Finnigan, declaring that the song should be banned. Not because it’s an expansion from the east, but because they’re “promoting paedophilia”.
Having seen the kissing and hugging in the school uniforms, Richard called the girls “sick”, and Judy has claimed the video is “entertainment for paedophiles.”
Others don’t categorically agree with this. "Unfortunately, all this commotion takes the attention away form their music, which is not bad at all," writes Nick Cohen in the ‘Telegraph’. "As in the case with a ‘matryoshka’, [A set of wooden Russian dolls that open up and fit inside one another perfectly. –Yul.] All The Things She Said has more levels than one would assume, looking at the packaging. If in the beginning the synthetically-pathetic sound appears primitive, then you’ll soon be happily surprised by the sound of roaring guitars and a roar rock rhythm."
“They want us to be together, for us to love each other.” – Yulia Volkova, Tatu.
But the Associated Press agency insists that fans are being driven crazy not only by strong sexual feelings, but the fact that not one concert of Tatu’s ever looks the same, and the audience never knows what to expect from a show. One thing you can confidently predict, adds the author of AP, is that something scandalous will definitely occur.
The girls themselves say that they don’t have any one secret to success, and just try to be themselves and sing about what’s clear to others their age.
"Our songs are about our life," AP quotes Lena Katina. "They just suit the lives of today’s youth, their mentality."
"People like us the way we are," adds Yulia Volkova. "They want to see the life that we live – to be together, to love each other. And they also like our image – our skirts, for example. This is what they wait for from us."
It’s true. Most in the West don’t believe that the Tatu girls are lovers; in Russia they say each of the girls has a boyfriend.
But these are just rumours.
Translation by Yul.
Thanks to Kate B.
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